Popularity of themes

I have an idea which is both useful for users and would increase WP profit.

The idea is simple: Provide a list of all themes available on WP with popularity percent for each theme. List the least popular themes first and recommend to the users to use the least popular themes advertising it as "staying out from the crowd".

Then the users will have incentive to use paid (and therefore less popular themes). It will increase your profit.

This will also increase diversity of the Web and is good for everybody.

* Our 69th most popular theme
* 42,123 blogs use the Inuit Types theme
* Launched on April 15, 2010

Then the users will have incentive to use paid (and therefore less popular themes). It will increase your profit.

The notice on my dashboard has the opposite effect on me. Moreover, if I purchase a Premium theme for a free hosted wordpress.com and then choose to move that blog content a wordpress.ORG install the Premium theme is valid only here at wordpress.com.

The theme charts fascinate me. The fact that an ancient theme like Sweet Blossoms is up in the 30s says there's still a serious shortage of feminine themes. I was baffled that they'd added Basic Maths as a premium theme, but now I've seen how low-ranking the similar Grid Focus is I'm even more baffled.

Mostly, unpopular themes are unpopular for a reason. Many of them are fairly new and still climbing. There are dated Classic-based themes with basic rendering issues that wouldn't have a hope of making it into the .org directory if they were released today; there are dull minimalist themes which fail to offer anything other themes don't do better; and there are a couple which may be victims of inappropriate tagging (Blix is 'girly' while Ocadia and Flower Power aren't? weirdness).

As long as you're using a theme outside the top 20, you're unlikely to run into too many other blogs with the same theme as yours, and if 'uniqueness' is what you're after, custom CSS is a far better bet than premium.